OpenStreetMap

tmtm's Diary

Recent diary entries

NI B170

Posted by tmtm on 21 December 2007 in English.

I used to live just off what turns out to be the B170, in Belfast. So I've made sure it's mapped from start to end. It starts as the Belmont Road, from the bottom where it meets the Holywood Road, continues up past the roundabout, and up over the Craigantlet Hills, where it becomes the Ballymiscaw Road. Somewhere along that stretch it changes from being in Belfast City Council to Castlereagh: both have the road 'finishing' at that point, so from a purely administrative POV, the "direction" of the road changes at that point. I've reflected this by splitting the road at the closest point to where I can remember the council signs being. If this causes a problem in rendering, someone can always unify things.

(As an aside: we don't seem to have boundary information for the 26 councils in Northern Ireland yet. The plans to replace these with 7 "super councils" seem to have been mostly abandoned, and the current divisions are likely to be in place for at least another 3 years, so it might be worthwhile trying to source this information.)

The route then continues to the end, goes down a portion of Whinney Hill, and then the full length of the Craigantlet Road (which later becomes the Ballysallagh Road) until it meets the A2 Belfast-Bangor road.

Most of the Craigantlet/Ballysallagh Road was missing, so I filled it in, and also added a few of the connecting roads down from it into Newtownards.

Location: Craigogantlet, Dundonald, County Down, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Finishing Скопје

Posted by tmtm on 16 December 2007 in English.

I've done about as much as I can do of Скопје for now, beyond just more tracing of the imagery. All the Bulevards are filled in around the central area, and most of the other roads and streets are marked on the journey between where I lived and the centre. I was able to get some of the road names that I wasn't sure of by searching for landmarks along them that I remember (embassies, major shops, etc). I've entered most names as English transliterations (I wanted to use name:en and name:mk for some of them but couldn't work out the magic incantations required in Potlatch to do that). Most of the streets signs are only in Cyrillic, and transliterations aren't always the same everywhere, so if there's a more "official" English version of anything, someone can change them later. There are quite a few of streets named after important dates in the country's history: 9 May, 20 October etc. These I translated directly, rather than just transliterating ("9 Maj" "20 Oktomvri").

Location: Kapištec, Centar, Skopje, Municipality of Centar, City of Skopje, Skopje Region, 1000, North Macedonia

Скопје

Posted by tmtm on 15 December 2007 in English.

Although I never managed to get GPS tracks when I was living in Скопје, someone else has uploaded some tracks, and the Yahoo satellite imagery is much better now than it used to be. So I spent a couple of hours tracing out a lot of the main roads, and the streets around where I lived. If I can find the map I made for my own use whilst I was there (and some of the photos I took of the street name signs) I'll fill in names tomorrow.

Location: Kapištec, Centar, Skopje, Municipality of Centar, City of Skopje, Skopje Region, 1000, North Macedonia

Miscellaneous tidying

Posted by tmtm on 5 December 2007 in English.

Mostly just looked for roads that weren't joined up today that should be. Finished connecting the Antrim Coast Road up to Ballycastle, added a variety of the roads up the Islandmagee Peninsuala, dualled the trunk road from Dundonald to Newtownards, finished the road from N'ards to Comber, and added a few of the back roads around that area. And a bunch of other smaller changes I've forgotten already.

Back to Second Form

Posted by tmtm on 3 December 2007 in English.

Today I moved back over to East Belfast and noticed that the area between Ladas Drive and Castlereagh Road was looking very empty. So I added Orangefield Crescent and the streets off it, as well as the Alexander/Alanbrook Road. This reminds me of a Second Form Geography field trip when we had go round this area mapping out the streets and listing the various factories etc located there.

Further down towards the city centre I also added Nettlefield Primary School which I'd somehow missed when drawing all those streets a while back.

Location: Lisnasharragh, Castlereagh, County Down, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Belfast Castle

Posted by tmtm on 2 December 2007 in English.

Whilst tidying up North Belfast, I also added the streets below Belfast Castle, and the road up to the castle itself. I'm not sure how best to tag the castle though. I've gone for historic=castle for now, but that doesn't quite seem to fit, as it's an active functional venue, rather than a 'historic' castle (like, say, Carrickfergus). Suggestions welcome.

Location: Low Wood, Shore Crescent, Mount Vernon, Belfast, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

North Belfast - Mallusk - Templepatrick

Posted by tmtm on 2 December 2007 in English.

This afternoon I filled in a lot of streets off the Ballysillan Road. Then I followed the Upper Cavehill Road up over the mountain, and the Hydepark Road round to Mallusk. Only the beginning of the Mallusk Road was mapped, so I extended it the whole way out to Templepatrick.

Location: Old Park, Ballysillan, Belfast, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

M2/M3

Posted by tmtm on 2 December 2007 in English.

I've tidied up the M3->M2 stretch a little more. This is a hugely complex area with lots of roads meeting and splitting; flyovers, underpasses, and bridges; and railway lines thrown in for good measure. It's far from perfect yet, but I cleaned up a few of the more obvious mistakes, like the bridge extending too far, and the start of the M2 at the end of the Westlink being completely missing.

Location: Town Parks, Smithfield and Union, Carrick Hill, Belfast, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

North Belfast

Posted by tmtm on 1 December 2007 in English.

This morning I finished off the work I've been doing over the last few days around the Whitewell area. The Whitewell Road, Floral Road, Serpentine Road, along with most of the streets off them should all be filled in down to Gray's Lane. My memory of the area isn't good enough to fill in all the street names: I'll leave that for someone else to do.

Location: Ballygolan, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Northern Ireland coast road

Posted by tmtm on 1 December 2007 in English.

I added lots more of the coast road from Whitehead up through Larne to near Ballycastle yesterday, thanks to the GPS which go way beyond the Yahoo imagery.

The new Yahoo hi-res imagery for Belfast also let me tidy up quite a few incomplete ways that were previous under cloud cover in East Belfast, and were difficult to make out on the previous imagery around Stranmillis.

The University Area around the Lisburn Road is still covered however, and there are no GPS traces for most of it. Hopefully someone will upload some, as I won't be back in Belfast for a few months.

Location: Town Parks, Larne, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom